The Class of 2022 visited the Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve on Oct. 10 for this year’s Frosh Service Trip. Students spent the day clearing the preserve’s trails and maintaining its fire lines, which are used to inhibit the spread of fires. The students arrived in the morning and were divided into groups to work on different areas.
Special activities were added to this service trip to help the students deepen their understanding and respect of the natural landscape. Art teacher Pilar Agüero-Esparza organized a drawing activity inspired by Coyote Valley’s longstanding oak trees, which she preceded by having the students “consider how the Ohlone and other indigenous peoples of Northern California completely relied on the oak trees for food, shelter, warmth, medicines, cultural crafts, etc.” Biology teacher Mike Pistacchi led his students on a brief hike and had them “notice nature” in a silent observation exercise.
Students expressed happiness at being given the opportunity to help preserve the area. “Not only did I realize how much effort went into maintaining a trail, but also I am overjoyed that I improved the environment for future hikers,” said Andrea Thia. “It is comforting to know I have impacted Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve in a positive way, even if it was just a very small amount.”
“Watching the path get cleared was pretty satisfying in that we could instantly see the effects of our hard work,” added Callie Mayer. “While it was very tiring and the work load was very intimidating, it was overall a good experience and worth it so that we as a class can contribute to making the environment better and more clean.”
Students also said they would like to return to Coyote Valley in the spring to continue their effort and also to see how the preserve looks during a different time of year. “I think getting to volunteer with friends made the experience more enjoyable and seeing it in the spring with that same group would be cool,” said Nageena Singh.
Harker hosted a basketball tournament to build awareness of the Hi5 Youth Foundation in the athletic center this past weekend. Organized by Akhila Ramgiri, grade 12, it was the inaugural event for the organization’s U.S. offices. The organization, founded in 2015 and based in India, is dedicated to improving the lives of children through sports – mainly basketball. The event included free throw and 3-point shooting contests, and food and soft drinks were available for purchase. Eight teams from various high schools participated in the event.
“I got involved when the founders of the organization were visiting the Bay Area (where they lived before they moved back to India),” said Ramgiri. “They told me about what they were doing, and because I have played basketball my entire life, the cause appealed to me.”
About 300 people attended the event. “The event was great,” said Ramgiri. “It was the first event that Hi5 USA has had, so it was a great way to kick off! The organization’s motto is ‘children helping children.’” They want the adults in the organization to provide the infrastructure, but they want high school kids like myself to be the driving force in helping the kids in India. So, to mobilize high school kids, we decided to hold this tournament to seek out kids like myself who are passionate about basketball and may want to volunteer or get involved.
“The players and spectators had a lot of fun and it was a great time. This was primarily meant to be an awareness event rather than a fundraiser, however, the money that was raised will be put toward resources such as clothes and basketball shoes for the kids in the Hi5 programs in India.”
Ramgiri has seen the results of the organizations efforts firsthand. “I went to visit the kids for one week during the summer,” she said. “The impact that I saw was incredible. Some of the children have really turned their lives around through basketball. It provides them a means for expression and a way to seek something bigger for themselves and gives them hope that they are more than their family’s income. I would strongly encourage anyone who is passionate about sports or helping children to consider joining the Hi5 USA team or if they had the chance to try to make it out to Mumbai, India, to experience this firsthand.”
Andrew Semenza ‘18 and Millie Lin ‘18, at the behest of brother Jason Lin, grade 10, performed at a benefit concert on Aug. 19 along with friend Kevin Zhu, a Bay Area native and world-renown violinist. All proceeds went to the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit committed to serving as many immigrant women and girls fleeing violence as possible.
Jason Lin was the primary organizer of the event. “After debating immigration issues at debate camp, I went to a talk by the Tahirih Justice Center about their work regarding asylum seekers, and was moved by their message,” he said. “Although the TJC has a 99 percent success rate, they can only help one in 10 clients! Like many others at the talk, I was motivated to take action. Since my friend Kevin, a fantastic violinist, was about to come over to the Bay Area, and since Andy Semenza was also available, I decided to organize a benefit concert. My friends helped me get the show on the road.”
Millie Lin also had attended the talk. “We wanted to help the organization and the people it supports, especially at a time when the family separation issue at the U.S.-Mexico border was so critical … so we partnered with the Tahirih Justice Center to organize the concert,” she said.
“Five weeks later, after Jason’s frantic daily communications with Tahirih, volunteers and performers to organize the event, the concert was wonderfully successful. We far surpassed our fundraising goal of $15,000, reaching about $31,000 from numerous small donations. In addition to organizational help from Tahirih, the majority of the effort was truly youth-led, as Jason, performers and volunteers were all around high school age,” Millie added.
Jason noted the success was a group effort. “Spreading word of the concert was a challenge,” he said. “Everyone is constantly being bombarded with news and notifications, so it was difficult to let everyone know. However, the Tahirih Justice Center helped us contact a few local news organizations, and I assembled a small team of volunteers to help advertise. About nine fellow Harker student volunteers sold tickets with me. Some went door to door, some posted notices at farmers markets or libraries, some posted on social media – and with the support of the community, seats quickly sold out.
“Seeing the entire community come together for the concert and the enthusiasm of the group of volunteers in selling tickets and ushering guests made the whole effort worth it for me. It was immensely fulfilling to see our efforts come together for the concert. Thanks to the avid support of the community, the event was a huge success! None of this would have been possible without the volunteers, the performers or the community,” said Jason.
“Personally,” said Millie, “due to the great results and warm support, this event reinvigorated my belief in our local community’s potential to reach out and help others. As a bystander to much of the organizational process, I watched the wonderful enthusiasm of Jason and his fellow volunteers and friends in putting this all together, and I’m especially hopeful for the potential for those younger than me to accomplish great and good things in the future.”
Have you ever felt dismay about the increasing quantity of litter along our freeways, including our own Saratoga Avenue exits? If so, you may take heart when you see white “Adopt-a-Highway” bags along the road! Several years ago, former upper school history teacher Carol Zink noticed the bags along our Saratoga Avenue exits, and decided to find out just who was responsible for taking on the eyesore of trashy freeways. She met former public school teacher Loui Tucker and her partner, Sabine Zappe, a math teacher at Del Mar High, who had adopted the section of highway between Meridian and Saratoga avenues 12 years ago.
Said Tucker, “I clearly remember becoming obsessed with an enormous piece of plastic (it could have wrapped a car!) on the off-ramp from 280 southbound up to San Jose City College. I snarled at it every time I drove past it. Finally, late one night, I stopped on the off-ramp, jumped out, grabbed the plastic, stuffed it in my car, got back in and drove off. I felt great! I contacted the Adopt-A-Highway program in Northern California and, after a couple of delays and false starts, got my first five-year permit. I suppose I could have asked for any section, but it made sense to clean an area that I would be able to easily keep an eye on during the month.”
Since then, the pair have faithfully coordinated groups of volunteers one Saturday each month, and this past July reached a milestone 5,000th bag of trash. After contacting the group, Zink put out an email to the Harker faculty, encouraging other members of our community to join the efforts, and since then several faculty members – including Diana Moss, Shaun Jashaun, Agnes Pommier and Brian Yager – students and parents have also volunteered. Kristin Carlson, administrative assistant to Jennifer Gargano, has even pitched in several times to buy lunch for the group, as Tucker and Zappe take the volunteers to lunch after each cleanup.
After each cleanup, Tucker sends amusing reports to participants chronicling the unusual discoveries along the freeways and on- and off-ramps. She said, “We have returned dozens of items to their owners. Many of them were obvious items like backpacks, wallets, purses, credit cards and drivers licenses. There was a chest X-ray that we dropped off at Good Samaritan Hospital. We returned an envelope full of very crisp new $5 bills, found along with a calendar that identified the owner, to the owner of a Chinese restaurant who had planned to give the $5 as Chinese New Year’s gifts to his employees. We found a wallet and called the woman who owned it. Initially she said to toss it because she’d replaced it – until we mentioned that tucked inside was a love note from someone named Dave. She gasped, said she’d be right over. She brought a bottle of wine.”
They are always looking for more volunteers to help, and high school students may fulfill community service hours for pitching in. Tucker explained, “You have to be 18 to work on the highway with us without permission of a parent. If you’re 16 or 17, you can work with parental permission. I try to give high school students who want to participate a relatively safe area to work – like Southwest Expressway – rather than the freeway shoulders. For those under 16, I have made bags available and sent them out to clean city streets or a neighborhood park instead.” If you would like to support this effort, you may contact Loui Tucker at loui@louitucker.com and ask to be included on the email list that she sends to each month.
We are grateful to Tucker and her group for helping pick up in our own neighborhood!
On June 4, grade 3 English teacher Elise Robichaud’s students held a small ceremony for their Third Grade Veterans Tree, which was planted in the spring as “a living tribute to all veterans – something permanent that the children could enjoy for years to come,” Robichaud said. The tree was a gift from World War II veteran Edward Smith, the great grandfather of third grader Kamala Smith. Earlier this year, the class sent cards to Smith in appreciation of his service in WWII. He responded with a letter of appreciation and a check for $50, which was used to plant the tree.
“My hope is that [the students’] love and gratitude for others will continue to blossom just as their tree continues to grow,” Robichaud said.
An estimated 650 people arrived at the middle school campus on March 23 for the 2018 Cancer Walk. The annual event raises awareness of cancer and money for Camp Okizu, which organizes outings for children living with cancer. The event was started in 2007 by former Harker computer science teacher Michael Schmidt, whose mother died of cancer in 2006. Money was raised by selling baked goods, hot chocolate, T-shirts and other items at stations set up at various points around the walking area, which was adorned with flags that had written tributes to loved ones who died from cancer as well as survivors and those currently fighting it. In the days leading up to the event, several classroom doors were decorated to promote the event and encourage participants. Donations for the fundraiser totaled more than $6,300. To date, the Cancer Walk has raised more than $100,000 since its first year in 2007.
On Wednesday, a group of Harker students attended a special listening session held in San Francisco by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan. Last year, the EPA under the Trump administration began the process of ending the Obama-era policy meant to combat climate change.
Accompanied by science teacher Kate Schafer and Spanish teacher Diana Moss, members of Harker’s Green committee – senior Satchi Thockchom, sophomores Jai Bahri, Anvi Banga, Avi Gulati, Alex Shing and Anthony Shing, and freshman Akshay Manglik – all voiced their opposition to the repeal. The concerns voiced by the students included declining air quality, higher occurrence of national disasters and a lower quality of life for future generations.
“I think that attending and speaking at events such as these is supremely important,” Manglik said. “Making your voice heard at all levels of government, regardless of its import, is crucial for inculcating civic activism in a very civically apathetic (although that is quickly changing!) American electorate.”
In addition to giving students the opportunity to voice their concerns to government officials, the event also offered them new insight and perspective on climate change. “Not only did this event give students like us, who otherwise have next to no voice when it comes to national affairs, [a chance to speak] … but it also allowed us to hear personal stories of those directly affected by climate change,” said Bahri.
Students also mentioned that learning about climate change and the Clean Power Plan in their classes and activities at Harker helped them craft more powerful statements for the meeting. “In Green Team and AP government, I’ve learned a lot about renewable energy policy, specifically SB 100, a bill that would require CA to source 50 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030,” Thockchom said. “Because of my engagement with this bill, I could include it in my argument that there are growing factions between federal and state law.”
Despite their busy schedules, regional EPA officials spent time talking to the students. “Directly after the last piece of testimony was given, two of the three EPA listeners came up to us and congratulated us on our speeches,” said Bahri. “To know that what we said actually struck and impacted these people, who had heard hundreds of other pieces of testimony, was an amazing feeling.”
This past Saturday, 35 Harker upper school students, along with biology teacher Anita Chetty and Mandarin teacher Shaun Jahshan, visited the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge on an environmental service trip. Located in Alviso on the southern edge of the San Francisco Bay, the refuge is surrounded by uplands, marshes, salt ponds and a freshwater tidal slough. Students took a short walk along the trails and boardwalk and learned that Santa Clara Valley would flood without the refuge’s dikes and wetlands. They also learned about the animals and plants that make their homes in the bay wetlands, and saw a beautiful American kestrel up close, along with three huge white pelicans, other waterbirds and some very assertive Canada geese. Then the group worked in the upland garden area, removing invasive plants, building wire plant cages and planting and watering native plants.
“We are very fortunate in the Bay Area to have many groups and individuals who are passionate about preserving our beautiful natural open spaces,” said Spanish teacher Diana Moss, a member of Harker’s Green Committee. “The springtime is the perfect time to get out and explore them by hiking, biking or volunteering to help in their maintenance.”
Earlier this week, upper school students donated backpacks and school supplies to children from low-income families at East San Jose’s Ocala Middle School. More than 40 backpacks were dropped off at the school, along with pencils, pens, notebooks, binders, reusable water bottles and other supplies.
The initiative was led by three students: Andrea Simonian, grade 11, came up with the idea and organized the project; senior Amitej Mehta set up the donation through his mother Nivisha’s connection with the Alum Rock Counseling Center, which assists local low-income families; and junior Kelsey Wu managed logistics to ensure the effort went smoothly.
Students initially intended to deliver the supplies inside the backpacks, but “we received a large excess of supplies to put in the backpacks, so we decided to donate the supplies in boxes instead of inside the backpacks to ensure equal distribution among students,” said Mehta. “Each advisory that participated went above and beyond what was expected, which was amazing, donating more than one of each requested item on the list.”
This story was submitted by Harker upper school Spanish teacher and Green Committee member Diana Moss.
Members of the upper school’s Harker Green Team – club co-presidents and seniors Anika Banga and Satchi Thockchom, vice president and sophomore Anvi Banga, members Anthony Shing and Alex Shing, grade 10, and Natasha Yen, grade 9, and faculty advisors Kate Shafer and Diana Moss – attended the Students for Green High Schools conference at the Google campus in Mountain View on Saturday, Jan. 26.
The event, sponsored by the Los Altos High School Green Team, was attended by 85 students from 15 high schools, both public and private, from throughout the Bay Area. Each school gave a five-minute presentation about initiatives their clubs have undertaken, what inspires them and specific environmental projects they hope to work on in the future.
Harker’s team gave a great presentation about our Environmental Community Service trips, Green Tips of the Week project, 2016 Harker Green Challenge using the SJ Environment phone app and 2017 Meatless Mondays proposal. Attendees also heard from Stanford student Sierra Rose García, who spoke about the initiatives that Students for a Sustainable Stanford are working on, and got a pep talk on continuing to promote sustainability on their campuses.
Harker Green Team members had the chance to meet and exchange ideas with many students and came back inspired to take on new projects. They are currently making plans for Earth Week this spring, April 16-22.